GOOCHLAND, Va. (WWBT/Gray News) – A 7-year-old Virginia girl is thriving months after undergoing open-heart surgery for a congenital heart defect.
Millie Haenlein, a second grader at Goochland Elementary, was always a little smaller and slower than her peers, but her parents, Pete and Jessica Haenlein, just chalked that up to her starting school early, WWBT reports.
“I could only run around for a little bit, and now, I can run around for a lot,” Millie said.
“She didn’t have the endurance of the other kids on the team,” said Pete Haenlein of his time coaching his daughter’s soccer team. “She would need to take more frequent breaks and was not as fast. Again, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just thought, ‘Well, she’s 6 on a team full of 7, 8 and 9-year-olds.‘”
So, Millie’s family was shocked when her new pediatrician detected a suspicious heart murmur. After an EKG and an echocardiogram, doctors diagnosed the 6-year-old with a congenital heart defect.
“In between the two top chambers of her heart, there was a hole, and one of the veins that came back into the left side of her heart was coming into an abnormal position,” said Dr. Stephanie Lacey, a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s National Hospital who treats patients in Richmond.
One in 100 people have congenital heart disease, but Lacey says Millie’s case was unusual.
“Millie’s case was a little bit different because the vast majority of congenital heart defects that require surgical intervention are diagnosed prenatally, in fetal life or as infants,” Lacey said.
Within three weeks of the diagnosis, Millie was in the operating room at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., for open-chest heart surgery.
“My little girl was on bypass. They stopped her heart, and her heart wasn’t beating for almost six hours while they were doing the procedure,” Pete Haenlein said. “I could not think about that without completely breaking down.”
Thankfully, the surgery was successful.
“They said she’s off of bypass. She’s in recovery. I mean, we broke down,” said Jessica Haenlein of the post-operation text she received following her daughter’s surgery. “It was Father’s Day weekend, too.”
Millie made a speedy recovery, even surprising some of the hospital staff.
“Most children who undergo this procedure, they’ll stay in the cardiac ICU [intensive care unit] for two to three days. She was out of a cardiac ICU in less than 24 hours,” Pete Haenlein said.
Nine months later, Millie is now 7 years old and thriving. Soccer, cheerleading and gymnastics are among her favorite pastimes, in addition to crafting. She wears her new scar proudly, which her parents say is a constant reminder of her strength.
“She absolutely has a ton more energy. She’s grown a couple of inches. It was a significant change, even though she had not really recognized it herself because she had lived her whole life with that problem,” Lacey said.
Because Millie had a pulmonary vein that was rerouted back to her left atrium, her doctors will have to watch for any narrowing or scar tissue development there.
While it is rare to discover a congenital heart defect in older children and teenagers, Lacey says it still happens and encourages everyone to be aware of the warning signs.
“There are some symptoms, particularly in the older children, that we have families look out for, and those would be symptoms specifically associated with exercise. So, chest pain with exercise, significant fatigue, not being able to keep up as they previously had been or passing out with exercise. Those are all sort of red flags and would warrant a workup,” Lacey said.
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